Segregation

Segregation is a set of laws or social customs that differentiate and separate certain groups of people from each other in society, on the basis of race, creed, gender, or other characteristics. In the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, segregation most infamously took the form of numerous arbitrary, elastic local laws separating black people from white people at considerable expense to the former. These laws were most ruthlessly enforced in Deep Southern states such as Mississippi and Alabama, but were not limited to that region. During the 1950s and '60s, social awareness movements based on civil disobedience caused these states to question the advisability of continuing the segregation system. Federal laws passed in the 1960s declared the old system to be unfair and inhumane, and American racial segregation was completely abolished as an official institution by 1970.